The Best Notebooks (2026): An Honest Ranking

The Overall Winner: Midori MD Notebooks

The notebook I use for work, and the one I keep my personal journal in a large majority of the time: the classic Midori MD Notebook. If you are an avid fountain pen user, you probably know why. While the pages are slightly cream colored instead of the white some may prefer, the cost effective Midori notebook is one that I always find myself buying more copies of.

Price: $12-$20 (depending on ruling and supplier)

I’ll admit it, part of why I fell in love with this notebook is how well it fits into a cover. I made a leather cover for mine, and Midori sells their own as well. It looks high quality, but the $128 price tag made me pump the brakes. Luckily, I have some leatherworking experience, so I made my own instead. That said, I loved this notebook even before the cover! Just as a naked softcover book tossed in my bag before class, it already held its own.

The paper itself is a warm cream color, and if you’re a die-hard fan of plain white pages, this might turn you off immediately. Personally I don’t mind it, and the price to performance ratio more than makes up for the coloration. The pages are also fairly matte in texture, which I tend to prefer over glossier paper when writing with a fountain pen.

Speaking of the paper itself, let’s talk texture. The texture on the Midori notebooks has a bit of a texture to it, it isn’t as glossy as some other papers and the writing has notably more feedback (especially compared to the likes of a Rhodia or Clairefontaine page). Overall, I enjoy this because it lets me take my daily notes on it while I am at work with a bit of feedback, it is a good reminder to enjoy the paper I am using instead of just jotting stuff down before sprinting off to the next task.

Let’s talk mediums: this paper has taken everything I throw at it. Pencils do great, the texture of the page gives great feedback and tends to keep really smooth consistency over how the lead wears off. For rollerball and gel pens, the ink absorbs beautifully and the writing experience (while a bit smoother) is still excellent. For fountain pens, the paper dries relatively quickly and displays both sheen and shimmer inks wonderfully.

Overall, this notebook is the benchmark I grade things with. It is very reasonably priced, make excellent gifts, and have this simplistic beauty to them. They are highly customizable due to their blank slate nature, and really are just great at everything. These notebooks can be a bit hard to find, as they are inconsistently on sites like Amazon.

Best Premium Pickup: Maruman Mnemosyne Journal

When I want to sit down and really focus on writing, I find myself often going for the Maruman Mnemosyne A5 hardcover journal.

Price: $35~ (varies for other versions)

Before I talk about why I love this notebook I do want to mention one thing, and that is the binding: while I prefer to use this paper as a journal style book, many users love and adore the spiral bound version of this notebook. If you absolutely love spiral bound notebooks, this is the one I would suggest for writing!

Writing on this paper is an absolute wonder, the paper is a great white and holds ink incredibly well. The texture is incredibly smooth and feels slick under a nib. While writing you can easily get carried away with focusing on just getting words down on a page, which can be absolutely amazing for extended writing sessions or brainstorming. The price tag on these notebooks is on the higher side, but it is slightly offset by the fact that it is a large journal.

The Maruman Mnemosyne notebook runs 239 pages with 4 of those being table of contents. I absolutely love that they included extra pages for the table of contents, because I find that if you are trying to do multiple topics in one book, or if you catalog, it gives you the option to do so. I counted 21 spaces per ToC page. With 236 body pages, that gives you an entry about every two and a half pages, which is a great benchmark that I think more companies should use for design!

I do absolutely love the cover on this, my version is the 10th anniversary edition, which came with a few visual updates. The dot grid on mine has some very nice leveling marks on the tops and sides which can help keep text and other contents in line with each other. The overall design of this notebook really is a cut above the rest!

A few things I wanted to note on this one as things I might consider negative. After using Midori notebooks for so long I have become spoiled with pages laying flat while I write, but even among other notebooks this one is especially bad at the beginning and end, where it is hard to write in. I believe this to be due to the thicker and more premium feeling cover. Also, this notebook is amazing at what it does, but it really just feels like most of the other notebooks of its type. It has no extreme innovations, no extra special small design features that I love, and nothing really makes this stand out other than the fact that it just feels good to use.

I think that this notebook makes a great gift. If you want to give someone a notebook that looks and acts like every other notebook they have owned, but one that just feels better in pretty much every way, this is your way to go. I have also started to appreciate the fact that it blends in with other notebooks the more I use it. There is something about a product that just is nicer but doesn’t feel the need to stand out too terribly much.

*While editing this review I found a few posts about several users having issues with hand oils sticking to the page. While I personally have not had this experience with the notebook, I wanted to note it; some users say it’s only with pickier pens, but it’s still something I wanted to mention.

Best Budget Pick: Apica CD

Do you write with ballpoints / gels / less picky fountain pens? Do you have $3? You are an excellent candidate to become an Apica CD user.

Price: $3-12 (Depending on Size)

Apica CD is something that I love that it exists, but I still wish we had slightly better options. Coming in between $3-$12 depending on the size of notebook, they really are the best budget pick that I have found. Generally, with budget papers you end up with deal breaking bleeding into the paper, but Apica CD does a good job at being a truly passable pick.

Overall I really do not have a ton to say on this brand other than the fact that it is highly affordable, pretty ok at what it does, and doesn’t have a ton of bleed through! Go try one, see if you like it. Some people swear by this paper, but even if I was a huge fan of the paper stock itself, they can be hard to find in larger page counts. They do notably sell a lot of B4 sized notebooks, which are better for things such as class or work notes in my experience.

Best Moleskine Upgrade: Leuchtturm1917 Hardcover

For those who adore the moleskine form factor, but want a notebook worth keeping.

Price: $25~

The Leuchtturm1917 is one of those notebooks that almost everyone in the hobby has owned at some point, and for good reason. If I had to sum it up quickly, it is a Moleskine that actually learned from its mistakes. Slightly better paper, a much smarter layout, and a build that feels like it was made by people who actually use notebooks. It is not the best paper I have ever put a pen to, but it is a genuinely solid pick, and one I keep coming back to.

The version I have and am basing this review off of is a great example of one of my favorite things about these notebooks; the colors are pretty great. I have the powder pink hardcover, and it is one of my favorite colors in any notebook I own.

But since you don’t buy a notebook just for the cover, let’s talk paper again. You get 251 numbered pages of 80 gsm stock, and the color is a mild off-white with a faint yellow lean. It is not as deeply tinted as the Midori papers, which sit closer to a true ivory, but it is close-ish, and if you are a die-hard white-page person it might still throw you off a little. Compared to the Maruman Mnemosyne paper I love so much, it does not quite keep up. The Maruman is smoother and just feels more premium under a nib. The Leuchtturm holds its own, but it is a step below the top of the class.

My main hesitation with these papers come for fountain pens: it is fine, not phenomenal. Drier and finer nibs do great, but wetter pens can show some ghosting on the reverse side, and the occasional sheen or shimmer ink will not pop quite like it does on glassier paper. It will handle your daily writing without complaint, just do not expect it to be a showcase for your crazier shimmer / sheen inks. On the one I have, I resort to only writing on the right side of the page because the bleed is more than I want in a normal notebook. To be fair though, I only write on one of the two sides in many of my notebooks, but that is personal preference (even if it is fairly wasteful).

Overall? This is an easy notebook to give a soft recommendation. It is not going to dethrone my Maruman or the Midori, but it does not need to. It is the dependable, well-built, good-looking pick that works for almost anyone, and at an average of around $25 it sits right in that comfortable middle ground. If you want a notebook that just works and looks good doing it, this is a very safe place to land.

Other Papers to Consider

Now that I have all my major picks out and explained, I wanted to take a moment and list out some really great papers that if you have the opportunity are totally worth trying, and just didn’t make my personal lists for one reason or another.

• Tomoe River: The fabled paper of the Hobonichi planner, an absolutely incredible paper that I love writing on. It can be hard to source the larger page count ones, and the thin A5 notebooks can be hard to write in because of the binding. One of my favorite papers, but one of my less enjoyed overall experiences. If you love planners, look at the Hobonichi though!
• Exceed: A notebook I found at Walmart of all places. Paper stock thick enough to write on both sides of the page with wetter fountain pens, the only reason this isn’t on the list at its price and value is because I have two notebooks that are clearly from different manufacturers. . . They are nothing alike, I loved my first one and bought a second and it’s clearly batch dependent. Great for rollerball pens though!
• Rhodia: If I could only have one paper for notes it would probably be Rhodia paper. It is amazing paper stock and comes in legal pad sizes. It is very affordable and great value. If you write on legal pads, this is my go to.
• Lamy: I love Lamy pens, I had the opportunity to write on some freshly released Lamy notebooks while in Japan. Unfortunately the ones I was writing in had an issue with some feathering outside of the ink, while the paper texture was good, feathering kind of disqualifies you in the notebook world.
• Life Note: Amazing for fountain pens that can write a little on the wet side. I absolutely love life note paper stock, my only issue is it is expensive in the US and I really do not love the notebook design. If you love the front cover, or are in Japan where it is far more affordable, I highly recommend grabbing one and trying it.
• Clairefontaine: This is truly most peoples gold standard. If you spend any time in the notebook loving world, you will hear hymns of praise for this brand. Unfortunately, I find the notebooks really ugly. The covers were either Rhodia thin and not amazing, or thicker and usethis textured matted color that really I just didn’t love as the cover. The paper is good, but I have yet to find a Clairefontaine medium that gives me an amazing overall writing experience. I have heard that some of the Quo Vadis journals use Clairefontaine paper, and they are on my list to try. But, until I get my hands on one, Clairefontaine will have to live down here.
• Iroful: This is a brand I have high hopes for but cannot give a recommendation without more knowledge. I will say that I use Iroful as my ink swatch cards, and they are amazing at that. The writing on the card stock is amazing at showing sheen and shimmer. The only reason it isn’t in this review is because I have yet to be able to try a full notebook size version.

Dishonorable Mention – Moleskine

I wanted to append this on here since I get asked very frequently what my opinions are on Moleskine products.

To be brutally honest, I have never used a moleskine notebook that I enjoyed. I have systematically removed them from my life over the years, and I only currently even own two moleskine notebooks. One of them is an exclusive from Sumida Aquarium, it is still in and will remain in the wrapper for it. The other notebook is on my shelf of full notebooks, it was finished nearly a decade ago and exists as an ever present reminder that things get better with time. The only positive trait this brand has is its ability to get pretty crossovers and do large custom orders.